Tents, scruffy people, mud, primitive latrines ... and quantum physics? A group called Guerilla Science has been pitching both its tent – and a scientific message. Frank Swain reports from the Latitude festival as the scientists got down and dirty with the revellers.

The Guardian's Science Book Club has been tackling Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time. Our literary guru Tim Radford kicked off proceedings and stirred up a hornet's nest by suggesting that one of the ingredients for the book's phenomenal success might be Hawking's boast that he was trying to "understand the mind of god".